William Lux of Baltimore 18th Century Merchant
William Lux of Baltimore 18th Century Merchant
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Date
1974
Authors
Satek, Pamela
Advisor
McCusker, John J.
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Abstract
The Williwn Lux Letterbook appears here in edited form, complete
with index and preceded by a multi-faceted discussion of various
commercial, social and political issues of the eighteenth-century
Chesapeake region which are raised by the Letterbook content. William
Lux was a prominent merchant of Baltimore Town who wrote these business
letters from 1763-1768, chiefly to correspondents in London, Barbados,
southern Europe, Philadelphia, New York, and Norfolk. It is apparent
that Lux had recently expanded into new trades in the early 1760s,
and his records show important exports of wheat and iron to Norfolk
which went unnoticed by customs officials at Annapolis. The complicity
of customs officials and other assistance from figures of the "planting
society" played an important part in fostering Baltimore's rise in the
wheat trade. There is evidence that both pre- and post-1763 British
imperial measures threatened Baltimore's bright commercial future and
provided economic motivations for the leading role the merchants there
played in pre-Revolutionary agitation. There is especial analysis here
of Lux 's own motivations and impetus into Revolution and the apparent
war-profiteering he carried on after 1776. This suggests that possible psychological origins for Lux's trade entrepreneurship may also have
predisposed an apparent "conservative, establishment type" toward a
revolutionary advocacy of independence from the motherland.